


Coal

by orphan_account



Series: Rush Summer [9]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Culture Shock, Gen, Multi, Rush Valley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 10:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1262296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paninya’s lips are soft, cool and dry. Thin cracks, almost like rivulets in welded steel, map out a terrain for Lan Fan’s mouth to explore: the lower slightly larger than the upper, the curve of the upper lip reminding her something of a bow. The skin around her lips is somewhat warmer, and to the left Lan Fan can taste a trickle of salty sweat. Merely another note to the unrelentless atmosphere of the kiss.<br/>Pressure on her shoulders. Both of them. Paninya’s hands, pushing against her.<br/>When Lan Fan breaks the kiss, her mouth parted slightly—and she’s not sure if from the kiss or from a lingering surprise that flares up more strongly as the split-seconds speed by—she can hear the wet noise, the wet popping <em>plop</em> that shivers down her spine from the crown of her skull to split at her pelvis into twin bolts of electricity that spin down her legs and curl her toes.</p><p>-------------------------------------------------------</p><p>Or, in which Lan Fan copes with her consistent screwing up with Paninya, Paninya copes with dealing with Lan Fan's headstrong stupidity, and Ling apparates with the express purpose of making Lan Fan blush at the worst times possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coal

**Author's Note:**

> The story so far: After Lan Fan's automail arm broke on a visit to Rush Valley, she and Ling have been stuck at Winry and Paninya's repair shop (with a ten-year-old apprentice named Akihi) while the arm is fixed. Two nights prior to this instalment, Winry and Paninya took the Xingese duo to a party wherein Lan Fan was attacked by a transphobic individual. Due to a series of hints, Lan Fan had come to suspect that Ling specifically brought her to Rush Valley for Winry to assist her - and after overhearing conversation between Paninya and Winry, these suspicions were confirmed. After Winry discovered that Lan Fan overheard the conversation, the two discussed Winry's intentions, and Winry agreed to treat Lan Fan as a person and not as someone needing help, while Paninya has gone back to repairing Lan Fan's automail.
> 
> As always, a gentle, humble reminder that this work is part of a series. And that if I fuck anything up, please let me know.
> 
> I'm spending the next couple of days writing more of Rush Summer. Man, I missed this so badly. Also, I've totally decided to finish this. Because I'm lame. And Lan Fan is important to me.
> 
> We're going to hitting the home stretch pretty soon though.
> 
> Unedited/unbeta'd/etc. Enjoy reading!

Paninya’s lips are soft, cool and dry. Thin cracks, almost like rivulets in welded steel, map out a terrain for Lan Fan’s mouth to explore: the lower slightly larger than the upper, the curve of the upper lip reminding her something of a bow. The skin around her lips is somewhat warmer, and to the left Lan Fan can taste a trickle of salty sweat. Merely another note to the unrelentless atmosphere of the kiss.

Pressure on her shoulders. Both of them. Paninya’s hands, pushing against her.

When Lan Fan breaks the kiss, her mouth parted slightly—and she’s not sure if from the kiss or from a lingering surprise that flares up more strongly as the split-seconds speed by—she can hear the wet noise, the wet popping _plop_ that shivers down her spine from the crown of her skull to split at her pelvis into twin bolts of electricity that spin down her legs and curl her toes.

Paninya’s irises fill her world. Dark and blue and merged with a curious perplexion, like Lan Fan were the enigma of the ages, the mystery of the universe.

No one has ever looked at Lan Fan in such a manner. As if the sky had fallen for the gravity of that heavy gaze, of that heavy brow, of those heavy eyes shaded behind heavy lids and heavy lashes. Shaded. The universe in her pupils and the heavens in her whites.

Someone has, though. The Emperor of Xing. At the party on the block. At the court amidst the nobles’ glares.

“ _This one thanks you_ ,” she whispers.

Slowly she becomes aware of a million other sensations: The thin aching band across her thighs from the edge of the table. The expanse _of_ the table on her stomach, pressing her against the hard muscles of her abdomen. The painful curve of her spine and bend of her neck to crane upwards and reach Paninya’s face.

Paninya, who continues to stare. Dumbfounded. Or uncertain of how to respond. Or a thousand other things—

“Lan Fan.”

The chair squeaks pitifully as Paninya pushes it back. Steadily Lan Fan draws herself to her feet. _Chi_. The safety of her _chi_ , the safety of the Dragon’s Pulse, the safety of the emotion and intent of the people around her condensed into brilliant ribbons of silver.

Emotion, Lan Fan does not do well. Has _never_ done well, really, with understanding the sentiments and feelings of either the individuals around her or of herself. Yet in the Pulse she sees the threads of fate connecting living souls as easily as she might from reading a book.

She curls a tendril of her perception around the ribbon that connects Paninya’s soul to hers.

Observes:

Disgust. Confusion. Fear. Concern. Wonder.

Lan Fan snaps backwards, stumbles over herself and misses the chair by a centimetre. She can see Paninya’s mouth moving but the Amestrisian jumbles in her ears like grains of rice rattling in a dish and she doesn’t know, doesn’t _understand_ anything except that she’s fucked up, she’s fucked up, she’s fucked up and she should never have tried _anything_ and she should have remained in Xing under the Emperor’s thumb and why did Master Ling ever drag them to Rush Valley—

Paninya’s _chi_ warns her of the mechanic’s trajectory. But Lan Fan cannot deny her. Paninya grabs her shoulders roughly with fingers born of steel. Not the steel of her legs, but a metal even harder than that.

“Lan Fan,” says Paninya, and then the stars crack: “Lannie, are you okay?”

Lan Fan discovers her Amestrisian floating below the other languages that make up the complex interwebbing of cultures intersecting her circular existence, secants of Cretan and Aerugish and Ronshitese, some learned in her youth and others encountered in her travels and still more culled from vague references swallowed up by her unyielding mind. “This one is sorry.”

“So you like girls. Right?” Releasing Lan Fan’s shoulders, Paninya folds her arms across her chest. “I’m not mad. I mean—yeah, okay, I’m kinna upset that you didn’t, y’know, fuckin’ _ask_ , but you’re going through a lot at the moment—no thanks to me’n Win—but—” Her eyes narrow just enough for Lan Fan to swallow, hard. “—I guess I don’t really know what I’m tryin’ to say. Gimme a sec.” She reaches up, two fingers to the left and right of her head, and rubs her temples. “Okay. I’m not mad at you. At the whole situation, I guess. Okay, tell me: You like girls, right?”

Lan Fan stares at her blankly. But she has run far too often and refuses to do so again. Instead she selects the words with an exceeding dedication, placing each on the tip of her tongue to taste before allowing her voice to tremble the sounds to a physical form: “I think . . . I think so. But not exclusively.” She lifts her gaze to bore into Paninya’s eyes. Because looking away, because lowering her eyelids, because hiding her attention in the nooks and crannies of the shadows of the corners of the alcoves affords neither her nor her audience—nor her _friends_ —any justice she could call her own.

She doesn’t need anyone else to save her.

She has always faced the world headfirst. And no fucking matter _what_ the world says, the world will have to say it to her fire and her blade.

Paninya’s eyes widen. A thin rift of silence builds up between them, between Lan Fan with her feet ground into the earth like she were the Empress not only of Xing but also of the universe at large and between Paninya with her arms wrinkling her coveralls.

Then Paninya throws back her head. Laughs. Rusty and hoarse and ugly as sin. And Lan Fan has known sin, both the beautiful and the damned, and the grotesque and the damned. “Well, hell, I’m glad that this whole summer in Rush Valley’s been good for somethin’ _other_ than heat. But, uh, yeah, ask before you start kissin’ me again, since I’ve got a girlfriend’n all that.” She pokes her tongue out. “And just plain ask ‘fore kissin’ in general, would ya? Not gonna kill you, y’know. Now that we’ve got all that shit sorted out, c’mon. I figure you wanna finish discussin’ this automail.”

Lan Fan blinks. “Then, you’re not upset with me for that . . . ? This one apolog—”

“Quit with the apologies.” Paninya chops through the air with the side of her hand, a sort of sword clearing Lan Fan’s thoughts. “And quit with the creepy _this one_ stuff.”

“I’m sorry.” At Paninya’s scowl Lan Fan pushes forward to correct herself: “For the _this one_ stuff, I mean.”

The mechanic’s face relaxes into a grin and she indicates the table. Lan Fan winces at the deep gouges her chair has forced through the tile. Still, she pulls the seat up and, resting her elbows on the counter, peers over the schematics. “Um. What were you saying, about carbon-based automail?”

“Pros: much lighter, you can put more stuff in it, it rusts far less, it’s less apt to _break_ due to normal wear and tear, and it’ll speed up your movement. Cons: it’s costlier to both make and to repair, it can’t stand as much force, and it’s more apt to break due to combat.” Paninya rubs her chin. “Though if it’s any testimonial, I don’t think Ed broke his automail _nearly_ as often after he up’n swapped. And I can tell you, like I said, that it’s done wonders for me. Plus if I can get you on the carbon shit, then—” She circles a variety of areas on the automail arm. Adds in a small triangle to symbolise, Lan Fan supposes, a knife. “—we can stuff in so much weaponised crap in here that it’ll be like you’re a walkin’ tank.” Paninya smirks up at the vassal, who continues to stand with the armrests of the chair clutched in her right palm. “How’s that workin’ for ya?”

On some level Lan Fan worries that her visage reveals her amazement. Amazement that Paninya can simply pick herself back up and carry onwards as if the greatest revelation in her life had not simply dropped into her lap. Yet she knows this feeling well. Like many other aspects of Amestris, in which the past is not the past but is a fluid, a thing to be cast off and evaporated and set into ice and chiselled away as one wishes. In which the future has never been a continuation of a past, but a new world to itself. In which the mistakes of history can be written off as merely that. Mistakes.

Does she believe in second chances? Because Amestris, she thinks, believes in thirds.

“That sounds great,” says Lan Fan.

Paninya wrinkles her brow. “Are you makin’ fun of me, Lannie?”

“No. That—that really _does_ sound great.” She gestures towards the schematics. “Lighter? WIth knives and crossbow bolts? It sounds perfect. Th-thanks.”

“Hell, are you crying?”

Lan Fan wipes her eyes. “Of course not. Of _course_ not,” she repeats for added impact, pretending to ignore the negligible effects of both attempts to sound forceful. “I simply like weaponry. Having that much power excites me.” Power, to save herself, to save Ling, to save Xing.

To never, _ever_ end up powerless again. To never, _ever_ not have the strength to save her grandfather, _ever_ again.

No more Wraths, so long as she lives.

“I can imagine.” Paninya scratches up a few notes to herself. Little remarks in the margins of the page, like one-sided conversations to herself. Or, Lan Fan imagines, to Winry, who will cradle the instructions later and giggle at the inside jokes. Who will draw the page up to inhale the scent of graphite and sweat and Paninya’s hands. “And this is better anyway, ‘cause carbon-platin’ only’ll take another day or two at most, and then you’ll be home free, y’hear?”

“Only another day or two.”

Paninya nods enthusiastically. “Only a day or two or somethin’ like that! And then you’ll be free to go back to Xing’n whatever. What were you guys in Amestris for anyway?” Her gaze slides down to the chair in Lan Fan’s grip. “Er, you can sit, you know that, right?”

“Ah, right.” Within the second Lan Fan has seated herself primly in the seat of the chair. “As for why we were here in the first place, I don’t know, myself. I believe that he wanted to visit you and Winry, to be honest.” She suspects: because Ling decided that she needed an intervention. Not of the sort that Winry attempted to stage, but rather a breather, a chance to reconnect with herself after the suffocation of time in court. May Chang, she knows, wanders off to the land of her Clan once a year for this exact reason. And perhaps this is hers. Rush Valley. Winry. Paninya.

Breathe.

“Does Ling know? About you likin’ girls.” Paninya winks. “‘Cause I heard him talk about trying on a dress the other day.” She stills; the line of her mouth thins. “Not that wearing a dress makes you a girl. But y’know. You might be into that.”

Lan Fan swallows an inhalation. The bubble of air goes down hard in her throat. “I don’t know.”

“Hey, don’t sweat it. You don’t have to know. You don’t have to do _anything_ if you don’t want to. Hell, you don’t even have to _like_ Ling. I guess no one’s ever really asked ya that, huh?”

The set of her jaw tightens. “If I didn’t like Ling,” says Lan Fan icily, “I would not be here at all.”

“Sorry. Wasn’t questionin’ that. S’not like ya needed my permission or whatever anyway.” Paninya shrugs, and her easygoing demeanor melts away Lan Fan’s cold. “Heyo, wanna help me out here a sec? ‘Ere.” She tosses Lan Fan a tool, a clamp of sorts, or something like that. For a moment Lan Fan closes the fingers of her left hand around the tool prior to catching it properly in her right. “See that lever thingymajigger right there? Could’ja clamp that’n then dig a couple of those coveralls’n those helmets, those steel mask things from that drawer? Thanks.” Paninya rips open a cabinet and starts to arrange the materials on a movable cart. “Oh, and put on a coverall, would’ja?”

Lan Fan does as requested. Once the welding helmets are procured and the tool—some kind of cylindrical nozzle, upon closer inspection—is clamped, she stands a tad away from Paninya. Strips discreetly and dons the coveralls.

Heat.

She frowns. “How do you survive like this?”

“Welp, Lannie, that’s just how it fuckin’ works up here in the Valley.” But Paninya is chuckling. Snuffling. Whuffling, even. “It’s hot and we all smell like shit and somehow Win shows up with perfect hair no matter what.” She lowers her voice. “Between you and me, I’m pretty sure she’s made a deal with the devil. Maybe _she’s_ even a homunculus now. How am _I_ supposed to know?” Lan Fan offers a nervous laugh, and Paninya, shaking her head, clicks her tongue. “Let’s get automailin’.” She pauses. “Uh. Actually, I’m gonna go take a piss first. You should too. Eat ‘n’ drink ‘n’ shit. It’ll be a while.”

Lan Fan tears the coveralls from her frame and follows Paninya’s instructions to the letter. By the time she has washed down her turkey-and-provolone sandwiches and slice of nicked apple pie with a glass of sugar-frosted orange juice—courtesy of Paninya, who claims that, what with Lan Fan’s evident superficial similarity to Edward Elric, she should share his taste in meals; although Lan Fan does not much appreciate the comparison, she _does_ appreciate the food, which she admits is delectable—Winry and Ling have not yet returned from their mysterious trip. But Paninya has already dragged Lan Fan to back to the engineering workshop with spanner and welding helmet in hand.

“Ready?”

Lan Fan dips her head, and Paninya grins, flipping down the visor. “You like weapons, huh? You’re gonna love this.”

She demonstrates the crafting of carbon-based automail. The preparation of the jet-black material. The moulding and welding. The many cycles of work, of preparing and pouring and beating and cooling and heating and preparing and pouring and beating and cooling and heating and preparing over and over while Lan Fan scoops coals and coals into the ravenous inferno. Through the lengthy hours in the nearly unbearable heat, amplified by the thick, protective layer of their coveralls, Lan Fan feels as though she may well be drowning in sweat, or worse: No wave of heat through the Xijing summer nor any particularly sun-blinding day through the Si Wong has ever readied her for this moment.

But the sharpest steel is tempered through the hottest furnace, according to Paninya. And so she continues pressing forward, despite the throbbing in her head and the aching in her ankles and spine.

At some point, Paninya apparently notices Lan Fan’s stiff, slow motions. “Take a break. It’s your first time, and ya don’t gotta push yourself that badly, girl.”

“I’m not that weak,” she snaps.

“I don’t care how weak you are. Y’know, runnin’ a marathon in some couple hours doesn’t make you a whiz at swimmin’.” Paninya nudges her and Lan Fan is surprised to find herself stumbling to the side. Exhaustion. “You’re good at a whole helluva lotta things, Lannie. But it took _me_ —” She thumbs at herself. “—months to get to the point of bein’ able to handle this many hours of work, okay? So don’t be humiliated or whatever.” She rests a palm on Lan Fan’s shoulder. “You did way better’n I did my first time, trust me.”

Lan Fan bites her tongue so harshly that she tastes the iron in her mouth. “I have willpower enough.”

“I know, Lannie, but it’s not about—”

“Mind over matter,” she responds with a stubborn clatter of the teeth. “That’s what my _shifu_ has always taught me. I can overcome any physical fatigue with the correct application of—” She stifles a yawn, stifles the pain in her tired muscles. “—mental force.”

Paninya glances between the vassal, the fire, and the half-formed carbon shell of the automail. “Listen. Lannie. If you don’t back down _right now_ , the finished product’s gonna look like crap, and then where will we be?”

Lan Fan glares at the partially melted form of the automail dripping from the mould. “I—”

“Do you _want_ your automail to be shitty’n broken’n all gonky ‘cause you couldn’t swallow your pride?” Paninya reaches for the tongs clenched in Lan Fan’s palm. Presently Lan Fan releases her grip, almost as of the quick-strike of fear. “You did good, Lannie. Thanks. You can take your visor off in the hall; I’m gonna clean up and we’ll finish this later, ‘kay?”

Nodding mutedly, Lan Fan makes it to the doorway before the true extent of her exhaustion slams her in the face and hollows out her bones like a bird’s, until she collapses in the hallway with her sweat-soaked coveralls weighing down her leaden limbs and the welding helmet bearing down upon her head. The tight band in particular runs her skin to leave a mark of pain. Yet she can’t quite remove it, with her fingers stiff and seemingly stuck in position.

Her eyelashes touch the curve of her cheek, a feather alighting on stone, and her world becomes lovely, dark and deep.

Something like an eternity later she manages to raise her eyelids to a radiance of light. Radiance. Brightness. Gold.

Yellow.

Blinking away the film over her eyes, she stares dumbfoundedly at the blanket that has replaced the coveralls no longer heating her worn frame. The blanket. Of yellow. Yellow and white. With decals evocative of a bird. Of a phoenix.

Yellow jacket.

Ling’s jacket.

 _Ling_.


End file.
